My left hand began to tingle, and I slid it behind my thigh, letting the heat build, hidden by my body. I was about to lunge for Bennett’s new host when the demon spoke again, and I froze, caught on his words like a fly in a web.

“I hope Kastor gets his hands on you.”

I blinked, and my eyes narrowed at him in surprise. If Kastor was an enemy of the Church—a thief of hosts—why would she hope he got his hands on me?

“Kastor?” Finn said, and I thought I heard something strange in the question, but maybe I just wasn’t used to his new voice yet.

“Who’s Kastor?” Anabelle said, and the name trembled on her tongue.

The demon gave us a bloody smile, eyes glinting with an inhuman shine. “Kastor is the boogeyman. You think humanity has reason to fear the Church?” he demanded, his voice filled with pain, yet somehow still menacing.

We had every reason to fear the Church—the room full of bodies to Bennett’s right was proof enough of that.

The demon read my reply in my expression, then snorted in derision. “Your fear is wasted on us, child. If Kastor rises, the Church will fall, and humanity will not be long for this world.”

“You believe your own propaganda now? The Church isn’t saving us—it’s leading us to the slaughter.”

Bennett’s new pain-glazed, contemptuous stare focused on me. “A farmer slaughters his cattle because he must eat to survive, but he also protects the herd from thieves and predators. If you leave the pen, the wolves will find you, child.”

“So Kastor is a wolf now? I thought he was the boogeyman.” Was this a distraction? Was her plan to keep us talking until reinforcements arrived?

“Kastor is destruction beyond what you can imagine. He and his libertines will devour the human race whole, and our kind will be stuck in hell once again, crawling over one another in the dark for untold millennia, until the next species creeps from the primordial ooze and evolves into something we can work with.” The demon’s body seemed to deflate as blood continued to leak from it. “Have you any idea how many eons we’ve wasted in previous cycles, thanks to gluttons like Kastor?”

Eons? Cycles?

“Yes, Kastor is the wolf,” he continued. “And you are the sheep, and by the time he’s done playing with his food, you’ll wish you’d died alongside Adam Yung, devoured by merciful flames.”

The jump in my pulse was part fury, part terror. I held up my glowing left hand and stepped forward. The demon pulled a gun from behind his back and aimed at Anabelle.

Before I could even process the threat or its purpose, Finn tackled Anabelle and Melanie, temporarily taking my sister and my friend out of the line of fire. “Get him!” Finn shouted.

I lunged for the former deacon, my left hand ablaze, but the demon was faster, even in the new, dying body. He pressed the barrel against his temple.